1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printer management protocol for network printers and, more particularly, to a to a printer management protocol to assign and manage local and network printers in a networked computer environment.
2. Description of the Background
A primary goal of local area network (LAN) technology is to share all resources that are distributed across the network. Existing network software helps network administrators to accomplish this purpose. For example, Microsoft® Windows NT® Server 4.0 allows administrators to give anyone in their organization access to resources available on a Windows NT Server system, regardless of the client operating system they are using and without changing client software. Thus, no matter what operating system clients are equipped with, they can all connect to Windows NT Server using the protocols that they support natively. Consequently, most network resources can be managed from one location (centralized management). Resources like drive shares, SQL servers, mail servers, routers, etc. can be managed from remote locations. There is one resource that remains very difficult to manage. Specifically, printer management in networks is still an elusive goal. This is primarily due to the complexities in managing the diverse operating systems of the client computers, and the numerous printer drivers required for each different type of printer and for each different operating system. Printers that are attached to the user's computer are not easily installed, configured or removed. In order to install and use a new printer on a user's computer, the device driver must be installed from the computer itself, the port must be configured and the device mode settings (things like page size) must be manually set.
As an example, FIG. 1 is a local area network diagram that helps to illustrate the obstacles faced in central printer management. Within the LAN a plurality of clients, e.g., 20-1-1 . . . 20-m-n are connected to respective network Servers 30-1 . . . m via any of a number of different communication topologies inclusive of 10-base T, 100-base T, Sonet, Token Ring, etc. Clients 20-1 . . . 20-n might be configured to communicate with Server 30 via any of a number of different communication protocols such as IPX/SPX, TCP/IP, etc. In addition, Clients 20-1-1 . . . 20-m-n might be running any of various operating systems such as MacIntosh, Windows 95, 98 or Windows NT Workstation. Moreover, any number of different printers 40-1-1 . . . 40-m-n may be connected to the LAN, each requiring a different printer driver specially configured depending on the above constraints. If there are 100 client stations 20-1-20 . . . 20-5-20 each with printers attached, and there are 5 servers 30-1 . . . 5, then there would need to be 500 printer configurations defined and maintained. The management of client printer configurations has traditionally been a manual process and all printer drivers must be manually installed and network connections manually established. This is accomplished by the administrator physically working with each client station connected to the LAN, and the impracticality of the situation becomes apparent.
It would be greatly advantageous to provide a method for dynamically centrally configuring and managing a user's printer environment based on group membership, user name, terminal name or computer name.